Did violence really shape our faces?

In a HeritageDaily online article 'Did violence shape our faces?' scientists from the University of Utah discuss the evolution of faces in the ape-like ancestors of humans.

University of Utah biologist David Carrier and physician Michael H. Morgan 'contend that human faces - especially those of our australopith ancestors - evolved to minimize injury from punches to the face during fights between males. The findings in the paper, titled 'Protective buttressing of the hominin face,' present an alternative to the previous long-held hypothesis that the evolution of the robust faces of our early ancestors resulted largely from the need to chew hard-to-crush foods such as nuts'.

Carrier explains the characteristics of the australopiths regarding fighting ability, such as hand proportions that allowed the formation of a fist. The primary target in a fight is the face, therefore he argues the face would have evolved to minimize the damage from a punch.

This is partly based on their previous work, which indicates that violence - the evolution of fighting ability - played a greater role in human evolution than is generally accepted by many anthropologists. They suggest that the immediate predecessors of the human genus Homo Australopithecus over 4 million years ago - provides clues into how and why humans evolved.

The article does not, however, discuss the hypothesis in terms of gender.